09/06/2026
In 1899, Black Baptists in Macon did something bold for the times. They built their own college. đź“š Not a wing of somebody else's school, their own, for Black students at a time when Georgia barely wanted them literate.
It was called Central City College. It taught high school and college courses, trained teachers and preachers, and stood as proof of what a community could do with its own hands and its own dollars. Then the money troubles came, the property went into foreclosure in 1937, a white businessman picked it up, and it limped on under a new name until it finally closed for good in 1956.
So a college that Black Macon built from nothing lasted more than fifty years, and most folks from Macon today could not tell you it ever existed. That is not an accident. That is what erasure looks like. Had you ever heard of Central City College before right now?
